h in
love, with moustaches waving in the wind, and the joyous spirits of a
musketeer. They had married with sudden passion for one another, having
between them an income of some ten thousand francs a year, which the
husband, a fan painter with a pretty talent, might have doubled had it
not been for the spirit of amorous idleness into which his marriage had
thrown him. And that spring-time they had sought a refuge in that desert
of Janville, that they might love freely, passionately, in the midst of
nature. They were always to be met, holding each other by the waist,
on the secluded paths in the woods; and at night they loved to stroll
across the fields, beside the hedges, along the shady banks of the
Yeuse, delighted when they could linger till very late near the
murmuring water, in the thick shade of the willows.

But there was quite another side to their idyl, and Marianne mentioned
it to her husband. She had chatted with Madame Angelin, and it appeared
that the latter wished to enjoy life, at all events for the present,
and did not desire to be burdened with children. Then Mathieu's worrying
thoughts once more came back to him, and again at this fresh example
he wondered who was right--he who stood alone in his belief, or all the
others.

"Well," he muttered at last, "we all live according to our fancy. But
come, my dear, let us go in; we disturb them."

They slowly climbed the narrow road leading to Chantebled, where the
lamp shone out like a beacon. When Mathieu had bolted the front door
they groped their way upstairs. The ground floor of their little house
comprised a dining-room and a drawing-room on the right hand of the
hall, and a kitchen and a store place on the left. Upstairs there were
four bedrooms. Their scanty furniture seemed quite lost in those big
rooms; but, exempt from vanity as they were, they merely laughed at
this. By way of luxury they had simply hung some little curtains of
red stuff at the windows, and the ruddy reflection from these hangings
seemed to them to impart wonderfully rich cheerfulness to their home.

They found Zoe, their peasant servant, asleep over her knitting beside
the lamp in their own bedroom, and they had to wake her and send her as
quietly as possible to bed. Then Mathieu took up the lamp and
entered the children's room to kiss them and make sure that they were
comfortable. It was seldom they awoke on these occasions. Having placed
the lamp on the mantelshelf, he still